Brown Daily Heraldhttp://www.browndailyherald.com
Stories from the current online edition of the Brown Daily Herald.Wed, 29 Jul 2015 12:14:59 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.6Rhode Island begins operating under new budgethttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/91JtfPkkXPs/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/07/29/rhode-island-begins-operating-under-new-budget/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 12:14:59 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2817034The Ocean State began operating under a new state budget July 1, after it was passed unanimously by the Rhode Island House of Representatives and confirmed by all but three state senators.

The $8.7 billion budget embraces many of Gov. Gina Raimondo’s suggested steps for improving the state’s economic conditions — under the new budget, most Social Security benefits are tax-exempt, businesses receive several tax exemptions and more funds are devoted to the state’s educational system.

“We’re laser-focused on jobs and the economy, and when we put out a pro-jobs, pro-economy budget, the members rallied around it and responded appropriately and supported it overwhelmingly,” said Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, after the budget passed June 16, WPRI reported.

Businesses around the state are expected to benefit from several measures in the budget. One measure allows businesses not to pay sales tax on electricity and heating fuels — a tax break already enjoyed by households. Also affecting businesses, the minimum corporate tax was reduced from $500 to $450, WPRI reported.

An important aim of the budget was to cut spending on the state Medicaid program, which provides healthcare to the elderly, disabled and poor. With nearly one quarter of the state receiving Medicaid benefits, Raimondo turned to the “Reinventing Medicaid” group she appointed, headed by Secretary of the Rhode Island Department of Health and Human Services Elizabeth Roberts. The budget cut the projected state cost of the Medicaid program by over $30 million while still keeping the reforms palatable for nursing homes and hospitals around the state.

HealthSource R.I., the state health insurance exchange, which was not guaranteed a future at the beginning of the legislative session, was also supported by the budget. Legislators had the option to abandon the exchange in favor of using its federally-run counterpart, HealthCare.gov. But lawmakers decided to fund HealthSource R.I. by levying a tax on insurance premiums for individuals and businesses.

The state budget also finalizes the pension settlement, resolving nearly all of the legal challenges to the state’s 2011 redesign of the pension system. The pension law, which was crafted by Gov. Raimondo while she was serving as the state’s treasurer, was intended to save taxpayers nearly $4 billion by cutting retirement benefits to state workers. It has been under scrutiny as many unions sued, charging that the law was unconstitutional. Under the terms of the settlement, “some of the nearly 60,000 retirees and workers impacted by the pension overhaul would receive small increases in their benefits in exchange for dropping the suit,” WPRI reported June 9.

Under the new budget, education program funding will increase by about $33 million, and an additional $20 million has been earmarked for school construction projects. The University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island will each receive $7.5 million more under this budget than they did last year.

Though Raimondo’s RhodeWorks proposal — aimed at improving the state’s roads and bridges by imposing tolls on commercial trucks traveling along highway corridors — was not part of the final budget, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner’s Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank was created, and will replace the Rhode Island Clean Water Finance Agency to focus more broadly on projects regarding energy efficiency and state infrastructure.

Some taxpayers will also face additional costs under the new budget: A 25-cent hike will be added to the current sales tax on cigarettes, and elderly and disabled citizens earning below 200 percent of the federal poverty level will be required to pay half-fare to ride RIPTA buses, while all Rhode Islanders under the poverty line previously paid nothing.

]]>http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/07/29/rhode-island-begins-operating-under-new-budget/feed/0http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/07/29/rhode-island-begins-operating-under-new-budget/Takayama to step down as Sheridan Center executive directorhttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/G7QAhXxPlSM/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/07/11/takayama-to-step-down-as-sheridan-center-executive-director/#commentsSat, 11 Jul 2015 15:22:10 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2817030Kathy Takayama, executive director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, will leave the University to become associate provost, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and adjunct professor of biological sciences at Columbia, she told The Herald.

At Columbia, Takayama hopes to “create the vision for the best teaching learning center in the world” for the newly expanded Center for Teaching and Learning, which will encompass the existing Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, she said. The center will combine experts in “media technology and online and digital support with professional staff in teaching and learning and pedagogy to think about how we can support Columbia students and faculty,” she said.

The interim director of the Sheridan Center will be announced in an upcoming community-wide email, said Dean of the College Maud Mandel. “My hope is that the Sheridan Center will continue to build on its core missions but also extend its reach” to undergraduates through teacher’s assistant training and core competency programs, she said.

“The Sheridan Center has been a place where (Takayama) has invested tremendous energy and made really important contributions,” Mandel said. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning has invested resources, particularly on the side of digital learning, that make it an exciting place to join, she said.

Takayama came to the University in 2007 and engaged in a complete overhaul of the Sheridan Center to make Brown a national leader in both name and number of graduate student training programs, Mandel said. She also led the University’s digital laboratory initiatives and oversaw the launch of massive open online courses through Coursera, she added.

Takayama’s departure comes at a time of administrative turnover. Vicki Colvin stepped down as provost June 30 after just one year in the position. She was succeeded July 1 by Richard Locke, director of the Watson Institute for International Studies, creating the need to identify a new director of the Watson Institute while Locke temporarily fills both posts. This fall, Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn will also leave to become vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Her departure also comes amidst the start this summer of an $8.9 million project to renovate the Sciences Library to house the Laboratory for Educational Innovation — a part of the Sheridan Center — as well as the Instructional Technology Group, the Language Resource Center, the Social Sciences Research Lab and the Laboratory for Educational Innovation. The Laboratory for Educational Innovation has overseen the development of digital education efforts including MOOCs and flipped classrooms.

“What I loved about Brown and what I think is exemplified in everything we do here … is that we really do believe in the mission of learners being at the center of everything we’re doing,” Takayama said. “Even though we are a very competitive research university, there is an undergraduate voice. We embrace and expect undergraduates to be a part of that, and the center carries that ethos.”

A previous version of this article misstated that Takayama will become assistant provost at Columbia. In fact, she will become associate provost, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and adjunct professor of biological sciences at Columbia. The Herald regrets the error.

Adrien Deschamps, an undergraduate student on leave from the University, has died. Dean of the College Maud Mandel notified the community of his death in a campus-wide email Friday morning.

Deschamps came to Brown from New Paltz, NY, where he graduated from New Paltz High School as an AP Scholar With Distinction and a Presidential Scholar Qualifier.

As a first-year at the University, Deschamps was awarded the AiChE Freshman Recognition Award, which is given to freshmen who have been the most active in their chapter of the professional engineering organization. He continued to pursue a passion for math and science as a sophomore by declaring a concentration in applied mathematics.

Deschamps completed graduate-level coursework in applied math with the goal of obtaining a combined Sc.B and master’s degree in four years, Mandel wrote. He also served as a teaching assistant for CSC I0170: “Computer Science: An Integrated Introduction.”

He worked closely with Benjamin Raphael, associate professor of computer science, to conduct research in the Physical Chemistry Lab and the Computational Biology Group at the University. His research focused on examining cancer mutation data using a system of differential equations that modeled heat dispersion.

He also worked under Professor of Chemistry Christoph Rose-Petruck in the Physical Chemistry Lab. There, he was responsible for researching industrial uses of clathrate hydrates — crystalline water-based solids — and engineering reaction chambers.

“Faculty and students who worked with him knew him as an intellectual force and an outstanding collaborator who encouraged friends and fellow students to pursue their intellectual passions and to live life to the fullest,” Mandel wrote.

Outside the classroom, Deschamps served as president of marketing for Sheep Textbooks, a textbook rental start-up. He also assumed the role of recruiter account executive for The Herald during his first year at the University.

An avid lover of the outdoors, Deschamps also enjoyed activities such as biking, hiking, rock climbing and running, Mandel wrote.

The Deschamps family will hold a funeral service Saturday at 1 p.m. at Copeland Funeral Home in New Paltz, NY as well as a memorial later this summer, Mandel wrote.

Community members can seek support through the Office of the Chaplain and Religious Life at 401-863-2344 and the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services at 401-863-3476.

Family, friends and colleagues could not be immediately reached for comment.

]]>http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/26/adrien-deschamps-undergraduate-on-leave-dies/feed/0http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/26/adrien-deschamps-undergraduate-on-leave-dies/Klawunn to leave post as head of student lifehttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/MIJ3GpO4ha0/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/19/klawunn-to-leave-post-as-head-of-student-life/#commentsFri, 19 Jun 2015 19:48:05 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2817022Updated on Monday, June 22 at 3:50p.m.

After nearly two decades at the University, Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services, will leave to become vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of California at Santa Barbara, President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote in a community-wide email Friday. Klawunn will end her tenure at the start of August and begin her post at UCSB in September.

The announcement comes exactly one month after the news that Provost Vicki Colvin would be stepping down after one year in her position, adding to a period that has been marked by notably high administrative turnover at the top levels. Richard Locke, director of the Watson Institute for International Studies took over as Provost at the beginning of this month.

Klawunn’s passion for integrating students’ academic and campus experiences, combined with a desire to be near family, made the move appealing, Paxson wrote.

Klawunn’s husband graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and her daughter currently attends the University of California at Santa Cruz. The job opening’s UC label is what originally placed the position on her radar, Klawunn said.

As head of the Office of Student Life, Klawunn has helped define the student experience, overseeing a wide range of projects aimed at restructuring Brown’s physical landscape, while reshaping student services, placing particular attention on the importance of advising and diversity.

During her tenure, many student facilities, including residence halls, student centers and athletic facilities, have undergone renovations, while several student services, including the University’s Health and Counseling and Psychological Services as well as the LGBTQ Center, have been expanded.

Klawunn also served as the administrative contact for many student clubs and centers, working with diverse organizations to identify student needs and construct solutions.

In her new position, Klawunn will continue working toward greater integration of academic and campus experiences, including through the admission process. Klawunn said participating in the admission process will grant her greater input in selection of the student body and how that population is served.

Klawunn has been “a teacher, an adviser, and a mentor to so many students,” wrote Cass Cliatt, vice president for communications, in an email to The Herald. At graduation this year, “barely a class went by of graduates of the past two decades without someone running over and hugging her, thanking her, or giving her a jubilant or victorious high-five,” Cliatt added.

Klawunn “strengthened the student experience outside the classroom in ways that shaped a Brown education for thousands of students over the years, and that will have a lasting impact for generations of students to come,” Paxson wrote in the email.

Klawunn’s impact “can be both seen and felt,” Cliatt wrote. “The collaboration and partnerships that Campus Life built with the Office of the Dean of the College have helped build a support structure for meeting student needs that bridges extracurricular and academic life.”

Klawunn’s tenure was not without controversy, particularly associated with her role in University disciplinary processes.

In 2014, Lena Sclove, a former student, implicated Klawunn, among other University administrators, in mishandling the disciplinary process in her sexual assault case. After the accused assailant was suspended for one year, Sclove appealed the decision. Klawunn reviewed the case and denied the appeal. In wake of the decision, Sclove worked with Legal Momentum, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the legal rights of women, to file Title IX and Clery Act complaints with the U.S. Department of Education against the University.

Klawunn was also a visible University spokeswoman throughout the cases of the alleged drugging of two female students at an unregistered party at Phi Kappa Psi in October 2014 and the alleged sexual assault of one of the two girls later that same night. She continued to serve as the University’s voice in campus-wide emails, along with Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 MA ’06, throughout the decision-making and appeal processes surrounding the events.

Klawunn first joined the faculty in 1996, teaching in the English and gender studies departments while serving as director of the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center. She was named associate dean of the college in 2000 and assumed her current position in 2008. Klawunn also served as interim dean of the College for six months in 2014.

“I have had an amazing progression of opportunities here at Brown and am extremely grateful,” Klawunn said.

A successor has not yet been selected. The University will undergo a national search for Klawunn’s replacement, Paxson wrote.

“The search for a successor naturally will seek to identify a leader who believes deeply in advocating for the needs of Brown students,” Cliatt wrote.

-With additional reporting by Drew Williams

]]>http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/19/klawunn-to-leave-post-as-head-of-student-life/feed/11http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/19/klawunn-to-leave-post-as-head-of-student-life/A Brown Bites Guide: The Shark Bar and Grille Briberyhttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/MqEnk22W3Bs/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/15/a-brown-bites-guide-the-shark-bar-and-grille-bribery-2/#commentsTue, 16 Jun 2015 02:08:45 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2817019Gordon Fox, Rhode Island’s former speaker of the House, pleaded guilty March 3 to federal charges including bribery for receiving $52,500 from the owners of Shark Bar and Grille. The following is a summary of Fox’s arrest and sentencing, as well as what this means for the fate of Shark, the popular place to grab drinks on Thayer.

How did this start?

Aug. 29, 2008: The Providence Board of Licenses, on which Fox served as vice chair, approved both Shark’s liquor license and its license to stay open until 2 a.m. on weekends. The University, the College Hill Neighborhood Association and about one-third of nearby business owners opposed the decision.

One of Shark’s owners, Raymond Hugh, dismissed the criticism. He pointed to Shanghai, another one of his restaurants on Thayer, which had a liquor license and hadn’t caused any problems.

Meanwhile, Fox was making history…

February 2010: Fox was elected speaker of the House for the Rhode Island General Assembly, making him the first black speaker as well as the first openly gay speaker in the history of the state.

…eventually for the wrong reasons

March 21-22, 2014: Federal and state law enforcement raided the Statehouse and Fox’s home to collect evidence regarding an “undisclosed matter.” The next day, Fox resigned as speaker of the House, though he vowed to serve out the remainder of his term as a representative.

March 3, 2015: Fox pleaded guilty to federal charges of committing wire fraud, filing a false tax return and accepting up to $52,500 in bribes. His plea deal included a three-year sentence in federal prison. It soon emerged that when Fox was vice chair of the Board of Licenses in 2008, Shark’s owners, Raymond Hugh and Bahij Buotros, offered him a bribe in exchange for his vote to grant the restaurant a liquor license. In an attempt to cover his tracks, Fox did not claim the illegal income on his taxes.

The accusations of wire fraud stemmed from Fox’s appropriation of $108,000 from campaign and political action committee funds for personal use between 2008 and 2014, an action that he lied about to the Board of Elections and did not claim on his taxes.

Why weren’t Shark’s owners charged with bribery?

The five-year federal statute of limitations for bribery has expired, but the state statute of limitations for bribery stands at 10 years.

Still, the fact that Fox pleaded guilty to bribery doesn’t necessarily point to the fact that Shark’s owners bribed him. It’s possible that Fox extorted the owners — meaning he could have told them he would block their licenses if they didn’t pay him — and he may have taken the plea deal for bribery specifically to avoid charges of extortion.

Fox also wasn’t the only reason for the approval of Shark’s two licenses. Two other members of the board also voted in favor of approving them, and the licenses were confirmed by the Department of Business Regulation.

March 30, 2015: The hearing for the petition to void Shark’s licenses was cut short by Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice Michael Silverstein, who granted temporary receivership to Shark’s owners, putting the establishment in the hands of designated lawyer Stephen Del Sesto. The city solicitor petitioned the Superior Court to grant relief from the decision.

April 24, 2015: Silverstein allowed the city to pursue its petition to void Shark’s license. But Silverstein required that the Board of Licenses must first receive permission from the court to vote to void the licenses, WPRI reported.

June 11, 2015: U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lisi accepted Fox’s plea deal for a three-year prison sentence. Fox is required to report to prison July 7 and pay $109,000 for stolen campaign funds. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said the state would “move forward” and the case is still open, the Providence Journal reported.

And where does this leave Shark?

The Providence Board of Licenses has yet to hold a hearing on whether or not to void the licenses. Kilmartin told the Journal that the state is moving forward with Shark’s case, but that it would need sufficient evidence that bribery — rather than extortion — occurred to charge the owners. So, at least for now, you can still grab a drink at Shark.

Richard Locke, director of the Watson Institute for International Studies, will become the University’s next provost July 1. He will succeed Vicki Colvin, whose sudden resignation was announced May 19 after only one year in the position.

Locke’s selection comes after conversations with members of the Corporation and last year’s provost search committee resulted in “broad consensus” in favor of hiring from within Brown’s faculty ranks, President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote Monday in a community-wide email announcing Locke’s appointment to the post.

Locke was also a candidate in last spring’s provost search, he said.

Locke arrived at Brown in July 2013, ending a revolving door at the helm of the Watson Institute, which saw six directors in the eight years preceding his arrival. A succession of one-year interim directors followed multiple unsuccessful searches for a long-term leader.

Paxson, who has made improving the Watson Institute’s reputation and reach a focus of her tenure, personally chaired the search committee that brought Locke to Brown.

Locke’s candidacy for the position a year ago, coupled with Paxson’s personal familiarity with his work, likely propelled him to the forefront of this round’s brief search process.

Two years after she helped bring him to Brown, Paxson holds not only his top-notch professional track record but also his understanding of the University in high esteem.

“Rick Locke has a great appreciation of Brown — its distinctive values and strengths,” Paxson wrote in an email to The Herald. In her community-wide email Monday, Paxson commended Locke for his “exceptional leadership.”

Locke said he looks forward to serving as provost.

“I’m really excited about the strategic plan,” Locke said. “I plan to be working with other senior leaders (to) make sure that we have the resources to move forward and build with the plan,” he said.

Faculty members who have worked with Locke extol his commitment to interdisciplinary studies as well as his standout leadership abilities.

“Academically, he really can go across many boundaries,” said Barrett Hazeltine, professor emeritus of engineering. In Locke’s first year at Brown, “he talked to people at the Swearer Center (for Public Service) about his interests, which was a pretty remarkable thing for him to do given all of his other commitments,” Hazeltine said.

This dedication to bridging departments is a key part of what makes Locke “a perfect fit for Brown,” Hazeltine said.

Dean of the School of Public Health Terrie Wetle, who has worked with Locke to cosponsor events between the School of Public Health and the Watson Institute, described him as “smart and warm” and “very strategic and effective.”

“He is clear and direct and decisive — all qualities you want for a position like this,” she added.

“He is going to be a great provost because he has two qualities that you don’t often find in one person,” said Patrick Heller, director of the Watson Institute’s graduate program in development and professor of sociology and international studies. “He is a real intellectual and an accomplished academic, (and) he has the other rare gift of being an incredibly great manager.”

This unique skillset has allowed Locke to pioneer significant growth at the Watson Institute in a short period of time. “It has grown more in the past two years than it had in the decade before that,” Heller said.

In his two years as director, Locke oversaw the integration of the Watson Institute with the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, has presided over fundraising efforts that have reaped $35 million and has helped attract new talent by introducing a postdoctoral fellowship program for budding scholars and by hiring established faculty members, Paxson wrote to the community Monday.

These two roles are likely to be critical in preparing him for a job that requires budget fluency and an appetite for new educational programs as the University expands, innovates and seeks new sources of revenue.

Until a new director of the Watson Institute has been chosen, Locke will continue to man the post while also serving as provost.

Locke said he is well positioned to fulfill both roles for the time being. “On the Watson end, we can be somewhat on autopilot,” he said, adding that he will serve on the search committee for the new director.

Prerna Singh, assistant professor of political science and international studies, has co-taught two classes with Locke and considers him “a pedagogic leader,” she said.

“He has this kind of transformative energy,” she added.

Locke said he is most looking forward to meeting a wider range of students in his role as provost. “I really look forward to engaging with the student body, and I’m hoping I get to know a lot more students,” he said.

Before coming to Brown, Locke served as chair of the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked for 25 years, and as deputy dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

]]>http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/01/richard-locke-named-next-provost/feed/5http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/06/01/richard-locke-named-next-provost/Long-time Brown University employee Armando Carvalho dieshttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/gmHXv36oZvo/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/29/long-time-brown-university-employee-armando-carvalho-dies/#commentsFri, 29 May 2015 23:27:14 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2817004Armando Carvalho, a member of the Department of Facilities Management for 18 years, died Thursday. He was 51. President Christina Paxson P’19 notified the Brown community of his death in a campus-wide email Friday morning.

An immigrant from the Azores in Portugal, Carvalho is survived in Rhode Island by his wife, Fatima; his two sons, Leo and Justin; his granddaughter, Nazalya and his three siblings, Paxson wrote.

Carvalho began working at the University as a temporary custodian in 1997, quickly moving to a full-time position by February 1998 and transitioning to another shift at the end of that year, Paxson wrote. He was “recognized by his supervisor as someone who was always willing to help out and who worked at a high level,” she wrote, adding that co-workers singled out Carvalho for his optimism and kindness toward others.

Representatives from Facilities Management could not be immediately reached for comment.

Corporation members held informal discussions with undergraduates about socioeconomic issues and science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses at their meeting this week, President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote in a community-wide email Friday.

The Corporation also accepted $25 million in gifts and reviewed progress on strategic planning and campus development at its annual May meeting.

Corporation members, administrators and students informally addressed the topics “STEM education at Brown” and “socioeconomic barriers to success at Brown,” Paxson wrote. The Undergraduate Council of Students selected 12 students to participate in each discussion on a first-come, first-serve basis, giving preference to upperclassmen and looking for a balance in campus involvement, said UCS President Sazzy Gourley ’16. The goal of the discussions was to “elevate student voices and issues not normally heard at the institutional level,” Gourley said.

In the discussion on STEM education, students touched upon the environments of introductory classes, the role of teaching assistants and the support offered within the classroom and from the Office of the Dean of the College, Gourley said.

Diversity in STEM fields surfaced as a key concern, with many students criticizing the “ways they feel Brown is lacking in supporting students from underrepresented minorities in science,” he said. Students stressed “the importance of bringing in dialogue of current events and race into the classroom,” he added.

Students also addressed STEM advising and the burden placed on peer mentoring groups, such as the Society of Women Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers, Women in Computer Science, Women in Science and Engineering and Departmental Undergraduate Groups, which need to receive more support, Gourley said.

Mental health support also fostered some discussion, with students telling Corporation members about the impact of teaching styles on their emotional well-being, he said.

In the discussion on socioeconomic issues, Gourley said students criticized the lack of clarity regarding which University resources are available to support first-generation students and students from low-income backgrounds.

The difference between actual and perceived need in financial aid awards also dominated the discussion, Gourley said. The student contribution figure places “a huge burden on students to sometimes work multiple on-campus jobs” and affects how involved students can become in social and extracurricular activities, he said. Many students noted that the summer earnings expectation has “major impacts” on summer opportunities, especially unpaid internships, he said. Brown-funded summer awards are “only slightly more than the actual summer earnings expectation,” he added, citing the $400 difference between the $3,100 expectation for upperclassmen and $3,500 stipend from the iProv Summer Internship Program.

“Assumptions about what students can provide for themselves once on campus” also emerged as a key topic of conversation, Gourley said. Many upperclassmen spoke of the difficulty of helping underclassmen navigate grocery shopping and finding meals, especially during Thanksgiving, spring and winter breaks when Dining Services maintains a different schedule, he said.

In the academic realm, students told Corporation members and administrators they sometimes “feel unable to take courses because they can’t afford the books to enroll,” Gourley said.

“To some degree, some of the administrators present were aware of some of these issues. But for many of the Corporation members, these discussions were the first time they were hearing about these experiences and issues that students are facing — especially with regard to socioeconomic barriers,” Gourley said. While Brown has built a more diverse student body over the years, “a lot of the support resources for a more diverse student body are not in place at the level they need to be for these students,” he said. The discussions brought light to what resources are and are not available to students, he added.

Moving forward, Gourley said UCS will follow up with individual administrators and Corporation members to identify solutions to the issues raised in the discussions.

The Corporation appointed 11 new parents and alums to the Board of Trustees, Paxson wrote. Sixteen faculty members were appointed to named chairs, including Provost Vicki Colvin, who will assume the role of professor of chemistry and engineering July 1.

In committee meetings and as a whole, Corporation members discussed “emerging areas of academic interest and priority” including data sciences, master’s programs, and “online and engaged learning in both the School of Professional Studies and the College,” Paxson wrote.

The Corporation also reviewed plans for the new building to house the School of Engineering, the progress of the Applied Math building and “planning to address facility needs in the performing arts,” Paxson wrote. Construction for the new engineering building is “anticipated to begin at the end of this year,” while construction for the Applied Math building will finish in the fall, she wrote.

The Corporation accepted more than $25 million in gifts, including donations slated for creative writing, financial aid, professorships, BrownConnect awards, the President’s Flexible Fund, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Brown Annual Fund, Paxson wrote.

In keeping with tradition for the annual May meeting, members of the Board of Fellows approved more than 2,400 degrees to be awarded at Sunday’s Commencement.

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http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/24/corporation-discusses-stem-education-strategic-planning/feed/2http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/24/corporation-discusses-stem-education-strategic-planning/Culinary capitalhttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/9MRJKS60gyE/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/21/culinary-capital/#commentsThu, 21 May 2015 18:33:40 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2816925This article is part of the series Commencement Magazine 2015

James Mark is no stranger to the best kitchens in the world. He’s cooked in North Wales and Southeast Asia. He helped open _ Michelin-starred restaurant Momofuku Ko in New York City and its spinoff bakery, Momofuku Milk Bar. But since returning to Providence to open North in 2012, the Johnson and Wales University graduate said, “I would rather cook here than anywhere else in the world.”

Providence may be relatively small and less wealthy, but it is home to a thriving restaurant community unlike any other on the East Coast — and perhaps in the country. It’s all here: an influx of talented chefs from culinary hubs like Boston and New York looking to get closer to both their ingredients and their customers; a legacy of Italian cuisine entrenched in Federal Hill; the fresh faces coming out of JWU’s culinary institute. And residents and visitors alike have taken note, coming to count on the city’s restaurants for world-class quality with local flair.

-Old school
Providence has established itself as a hotbed of Italian cooking. Classic trattorias populated Federal Hill for the better part of the past century, while nearby gourmet pizza-griller Al Forno has garnered national attention ever since its 1980 debut for its unique blend of old-world traditions and its own culinary twist.

“Importing parmesan into the state was hard. Importing real mozzarella into the state was hard,” said Al Forno’s chef and co-owner George Germon. He recalls having to drive to Boston with his wife and co-owner Johanne Killeen in the restaurant’s early days to buy imported pasta in their quest for high-caliber ingredients.

“It was nearby, it just wasn’t in the state,” he added.

Outside of the red-sauce sphere, Deborah Norman opened Rue de L’Espoir in 1976 as a quiche-and-crepe dinner restaurant. Since then, it has evolved into an American bistro with a focus on high-quality ingredients in standard preparations — think a peppercorn-encrusted steak accompanied by classic, thin frites or a duck confit risotto, the crispy skin standing in contrast against the creamy risotto and the edamame providing an innovative twist.

“I have customers who have been coming in for so long that I did their wedding and now I’m doing weddings for their kids or rehearsal dinners or baby showers,” Norman said. “This place really is a neighborhood restaurant.”

-Rhode Island-raised
But Mark’s restaurant does not follow this traditional model. Instead, North is one of many that typify a new trend in the Providence food scene. These establishments are best described as serving New American cuisine, incorporating different influences and rotating ingredients to create a unique style.

Though dishes like its enticing chicken ramen could pigeonhole North as yet another Asian-fusion restaurant, chefs also whip up options like charred pork with cauliflower soaked in a tangy apple-butter sauce.

Restaurants of this style are alike in their use of locally sourced ingredients — instead of shipping vegetables in from California or meats in from the Midwest, many work with local farms to meet their needs. The result: a meal you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Founded in 1990, New Rivers was one of the first restaurants to fit this archetype. Owner and head chef Beau Vestal was hired in 2000 — on the day of Brown’s commencement ceremony — and was made executive chef in 2003. He ranks among the pioneers of the farm-to-table movement in Providence, though he initially followed that model not because it was trendy, but because it made the most sense.

“We didn’t really source stuff locally because it was a fad. It just worked out because our friends were all farmers and the food quality was way better,” Vestal said. “We just organically began sourcing locally out of ease and convenience and quality, not really knowing in those days that — fast forward to 2008 or so — this whole farm-fresh-restaurant thing turned into a trend.”

Now, New Rivers’ constantly rotating menu continues to embrace the farm-to-table ethic with a seasonal spin. A recent visit yielded a plate of seared sea scallops dusted with a salty sourdough crunch and sparsely garnished with asparagus and baby beets in yellow and deep plum red, while the sirloin burger arrived topped with additions such as lightly sauteed mushrooms and tart aioli.

“Farm-to-table was a trendy thing to say, but I think that in Rhode Island, we’re really able to achieve that because we’re such a small state that the farmers can actually get to us,” said Ellen Slattery, proprietor of Gracie’s. “We’re so fortunate here that if we need to actually go to the farm, we can do that.”

An important part of this style of cooking’s success is access to resources, and as the smallest state, Rhode Island fits the bill. “Rhode Island is one of the only states that has so much land that is still allocated to just farmland,” said Jake Rojas, owner of Tallulah’s on Thames in Newport and Tallulah’s Taqueria, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican eatery in Providence and Jamestown that dishes out decadent twists on classics like a quesadilla topped with cotija cheese, radishes and tangy guacamole and authentic carnitas tacos finished with salsa verde and still more radishes.

Salted Slate’s Head Chef Benjamin Lloyd charts the growth of the local food movement from California in the mid-nineties, sweeping eastward and evolving as it moved. By the 2000s, to make New American food came to mean that “you were drawing from what was around you, but you were also influenced by what was going on in the rest of the world,” Lloyd said.

Many of these new restaurants are “not really setting new trends but getting back to old ways of doing things, meaning whole animal butchery and sourcing local seafood, sourcing local agriculture,” Rojas added.

Even with a palate operating within mostly local parameters, the opportunities for creativity are endless. “Our restaurant uses the same vegetables as Chez Pascal or Gracie’s or Birch, but they’re all made in a different style,” Vestal said. “So our guests now have an opportunity to enjoy asparagus, but they can see, ‘What’s Beau doing with it? What’s Ben (Sukle, head chef) at Birch doing with it? What’s James at North doing with it?’ There’s an ingredient out there that you can see eight different ways at eight different restaurants. It’s fun.”

-Providence and proud
Local ingredients aside, chefs attest that the culture and camaraderie of the city of Providence make it a great place to live and work.

“Rhode Islanders are very fiercely not Bostonians and not New Yorkers, and that appeals to me because this city was founded on shunning stuff from Boston, shunning New York and doing our own thing,” Vestal said.

Providence’s restaurant scene is different from that of even nearby Boston, which is much more competitive, said Matthew Gennuso, chef and co-owner of Chez Pascal. He added that Providence restaurants exist at the intersection of great food and great service.

A father of two, Lloyd believes that what makes Providence so attractive to chefs and their customers alike is its affordability and sense of community. In larger cities, he said, “to be able to raise kids and not be in an apartment, you’ve got to make a million bucks a year,” citing Chicago as an example. “People come here to be here.”

“People will go to those places first and then settle … where you can lay roots, be a part of a community, raise kids, have a meaningful interaction with everyone around you and have it not be the rat race of a large city,” he added.

-From classroom to kitchen
Brown plays an essential role in the restaurant community — a core element of the clientele comprises students and faculty, and for many restaurants, Commencement Weekend is the busiest weekend of the year. Restaurants cater to the adventurous and enthusiastic captive audience that is Brown’s student body, according to many of the restaurateurs.

“The Brown community is probably the most viable resource that we have to continue keeping that fire lit, keeping young people excited about the cool things that are happening food-wise in the city,” Rojas said.

The city also benefits from the presence of JWU, one of the country’s foremost culinary schools — Mark, Vestal, Slattery and Birch’s Benjamin Sukle are all graduates. Students spend time as interns in local restaurants, and alums often stay in the city after graduation.

But as much as the school gives to the broader culinary scene, the restaurateurs give back. “I’ll go into the schools and we’ll give talks to people,” Sukle said. “We’re very much up to date on the trends happening in restaurants, what’s happening in new restaurants, what are big up-and-coming names.”

The close ties between the restaurants and JWU help keep graduates in Providence where “they can flourish” and ensure the city’s next stage of culinary development, he added.

“We have five colleges here … which generally keeps our clientele and guest count a little bit younger,” Sukle said. “Food has become cool. Eating out has become cool in the way that music has become cool. It’s another hobby of people — they want to try new things, they want to listen to new music, they want to see new art, they want to eat new foods.”

As for what’s next for the Providence culinary scene, “It’s constantly changing,” Mark said.

Restaurateurs today are “very into the options that we have out there of sourcing ingredients. … It doesn’t have to be a traditional sit-down, white-tablecloth restaurant anymore,” Rojas said.

“I think those days are kind of done,” he added. “Chefs are super excited about not only the product but about this new renaissance, the changing of the guard.”

]]>http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/21/culinary-capital/feed/0http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/21/culinary-capital/How to change a culturehttp://feeds.browndailyherald.com/~r/BrownDailyHerald/~3/ZGyFRINbBKc/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/05/21/how-to-change-a-culture/#commentsThu, 21 May 2015 18:25:03 +0000http://www.browndailyherald.com/?p=2816935This article is part of the series Commencement Magazine 2015

It’s Amanda Walsh’s fourth day on the job, and her schedule is already filled to the brim: meetings, plans, deadlines for new policies looming just a couple months away. From her temporary office in University Hall, she has a view of the Quiet Green, blanketed in early May sunshine.

On that same green, two months earlier, hundreds of students stood around mounds of snow in silent protest of the University’s handling of sexual assault. Most had dollar bills over their mouths, marked with “IX” in bright red tape.

Sexual assault, and the question of what Brown should do about it, has roiled campus recently. The administration penalized two fraternities for alleged incidents tied to sexual assault or harassment. Activists protested the University’s actions in a case involving alleged drugging and assault. The hashtag #moneytalksatBrown became a rallying cry in person and online, garnering national media attention. And that was all just this semester.

Walsh is, in a sense, the embodiment of Brown’s drive for reform. Hired as the first full-time Title IX program officer, she is charged with steering the school’s efforts to handle and combat sexual violence, and she’s excited about the opportunities for change.

“Absolutely Brown is positioning itself to be a leader and, I think, has the resources and the support to do that,” she says. “I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think that was the case.”

Those resources and support are linked to the work of the Sexual Assault Task Force, which President Christina Paxson P’19 convened this year to create a master plan for Brown. In a 63-page report of its final recommendations released last month, the group called for many concrete changes, including the centralization and expansion of resources, a unified policy and a better adjudication process.

The task force also issued a call to arms on something less tangible. In its December interim report, the words are underlined: “The current norms and culture of the Brown University campus are not acceptable, and as a community we must seek in word and deed to fundamentally change that culture.”

How does a university change campus culture? This question is being asked at colleges — and beyond them — across the country. Brown now finds itself as one of the schools trying to come up with answers.

Campus culture

Justice Gaines ’16, a task force member, has seen several manifestations of a campus culture that needs changing — comments, for instance, like “PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is for soldiers, not for survivors of sexual assault” or a focus on questioning proven rates of sexual assault instead of working to reduce them.

“We’re still challenging things that aren’t really at this point challengeable,” Gaines says.

Still, Gaines and other students say they have already seen changes at Brown in the past few years, largely motivated by the heightened visibility of conversation around sexual assault.

Lauren Stewart ’15, another task force member, says she has experienced firsthand a desire for change — since being on the task force, she has sometimes been approached by people she doesn’t know at parties or in eateries to talk about her work. “People really want to make this place better and want to engage,” she says.

Kevin Carty ’15, a sexual assault peer educator, says he noticed a shift among the first-years in the Alpha Epsilon Pi pledge class he led this spring: When the group discussed consent, each pledge made comments showing that he had already thought about the topic on his own. Carty says this is notable because education about consent is so lacking in high schools. “That is all Brown culture right there.”

But heightened awareness has come at some personal cost to sexual assault survivors, like Lena Sclove, who sparked campus dialogue by sharing their stories, says Will Furuyama ’15, a sexual assault peer educator and a coordinator of the Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse. “While it’d be nice if all these conversations were just sort of happening spontaneously, I don’t think that they’d happen outside of that context,” he says.

The task force report noted that groups proven to be high-risk for sexual misconduct, like fraternities and sports teams, should have specific training strengthened and tailored to them. Carty says he thinks many of those groups will be responsive — and some have already started taking on the work of discussing and raising awareness among themselves.

But it has been a bumpy road at times. When the University announced stiff sanctions against Phi Kappa Psi and Sigma Chi in January, as well as tougher enforcement of rules against on-campus drinking, some worried that the move could have negative repercussions by pushing risky behavior off campus, where it’s harder to monitor.

Improving education

As the University considers how to foster the campus climate it desires, one of its main tools for changing culture is education. Training can help ensure that students from a wide variety of backgrounds gain awareness of the prevalence of sexual assault and an understanding of appropriate behavior. It can also ensure that faculty and staff members are cognizant of the particular challenges of sexual assault in the university context.

But this is an area in which many say Brown has been severely lacking.

A traditional model at many colleges is to have one event focused on sexual violence at the start of students’ first year — often a survivor telling a story of assault to a large group in a gym or auditorium, as Brown has done in years past.

“We don’t really have education right now,” Stewart says. “We have the one event during orientation (and) by that point, you realize nothing is mandatory at Brown.”

Research into effective practices has pointed to better ways to educate and train students. Inspired by a model at Colby College, the administration is working on developing a program combining online modules with in-person, small-group sessions.

These trainings would cover a variety of topics and take place throughout the year, aiming to stimulate consistent thought and discussion about issues like consent, bystander intervention, gender roles and sexual power dynamics.

There’s another component, too: making it required. The task force recommended that the University find ways to ensure participation, like making training a prerequisite for students registering for classes or faculty members receiving salary increases.

Liza Cariaga-Lo, vice president for academic development, diversity and inclusion, is leading many of the immediate efforts to improve education, including plans for next semester. The report set a July 1 deadline for creating these, and she says they are already underway.

Effective this fall, orientation for new graduate students will include an hour-long panel focused on sexual assault resources and policies. A similar program for new medical students will also be implemented, Cariaga-Lo says. And the University is working with an outside company to adapt an online training module for faculty and staff that will roll out this fall.

The task force report emphasized that education for everybody needs to include considerations of how sexual violence intersects with different identities and communities. Gaines says that means not glossing over the fact that sexual assault disproportionately affects queer people and people of color, for example.

In 2011, the orientation event Stewart attended featured a white woman talking about her experience of being assaulted by a man, which she says confined sexual assault to a very specific narrative.

“How can we build compassion to be more a part of our culture? How can we build understanding and knowledge and empathy into what we are expecting from people on campus and how we are expecting people to treat each other?” Gaines says. “Part of that is education.”

Taking the lead?

Though research at Brown and elsewhere has offered some insights into the best ways to educate and train people about sexual assault, colleges everywhere are grappling with the same overarching concern: Nobody has fully figured it out yet.

And perhaps nobody will. Each university exists within society at large, so there are limits to how much it can shape its own community. The task force report made clear that it does not expect Brown to be able to drive rates of violence to zero. But, members say, the school and the community have every obligation to try nonetheless.

As campus sexual assault has been elevated in the national consciousness over the past couple of years, many schools have started devoting more institutional resources to figuring out a better path forward. But the body of research remains relatively small in some areas — in the context of graduate education, for instance.

“If anybody had really figured it out, we’d all be doing that,” says Gail Cohee, director of the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center and assistant dean of the College. “What everybody’s doing at this point is borrowing from what’s working at other institutions. The nice thing about this getting such national attention is that universities are sharing information in ways I think they hadn’t necessarily done before.”

Hence the references in the task force’s report to efforts at places like Colby and Wheaton College. Cohee says a few schools, like Yale and Tufts University, were legally forced to devote more attention to sexual assault a few years before the national momentum kicked in with a renewed push from the Obama administration in 2011.

But Brown’s administration has focused on sexual assault for at least a couple decades, says Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, the task force’s co-chair. Brown was one of the first colleges to designate sexual misconduct as an official offense when it did so in the early ’90s, he says.

Some experts say a greater institutional commitment to change across the country is the most salient transformation in recent years. “We already know a huge amount, as far as I’m concerned. What’s been missing is the political will on the part of college administrations,” says Jackson Katz, creator of the national Mentors in Violence Prevention education program. “People are listening more because now there’s political leverage. There’s momentum.”

Still, no school has really emerged as a national leader on comprehensively creating better policies. “I don’t know if there’s really an ‘ahead of the pack’ in terms of sexual violence policy,” Furuyama says.

A range of efforts

Beyond implementing educational and training programs, Brown’s administration is looking to use a variety of tools to achieve the cultural shifts it wants to see.

Part of this attempted culture shift involves the reforms to the reporting and adjudication processes themselves. The task force wrote in its report that centralizing a system and processes that are clear, fair and supportive to survivors would change the nature of students’ experiences on campus.

Many at Brown actually hope and expect to see a rise, temporarily, in reported incidents of sexual assault: Since current reporting data is significantly lower than what studies indicate is the rate of actual violence, a rise in reports would indicate that survivors feel more comfortable coming forward.

“It reflects a sense that the culture is one that will support a reporter,” Walsh says. “We can’t possibly address the sexual assault, dating violence, stalking that is occurring on the campus unless we know about it.”

A campus climate survey conducted this spring by the Association of American Universities will also shed light on the nature of sexual violence at Brown. The survey’s results are expected in the fall.

Brown additionally intends to leverage its capabilities in another way: promoting and stimulating more scholarly research on sexual violence.

Across all the initiatives the University is undertaking, sources say, a continual process of evaluating and assessing what works and what doesn’t work is crucial.

That includes comprehensive data collection and reporting, Carey says, as well as seeking a shift to an environment where sexual violence is unacceptable. “That’s much harder to put a number to,” he says. “It’s more of a feel than a data point. But for me that would be a sign of great success.”

For Stewart, work to prevent sexual assault must be paired with a more supportive climate for survivors, from both the administration and students.

“My dream is: If you’re sexually assaulted, then you have a good support system because we have educated people to know how to respond,” she says.

“I hope that our environment becomes more survivor-friendly and sexual assault isn’t like this dirty secret — that we admit that we have this problem and we’re trying to work towards fixing it.”